Censoring Pornography on the Internet

Censoring Pornography on the Internet

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The internet was created for the cold war, in the event that the U.S. were attacked, there would be no communication among the nations leaders, because traditional communication would be disrupted by a nuclear blast. Since that time, the internet survived only though commercialization, the original form of the internet was scrapped when the cold war ended. Now, with this medium in the hands of anyone who wants to pay for service, the Internet has exploded with controversial materials that some people think should be censored. When I started this project, I asked the question should the Internet be regulated and if so, how and why? First we'll look at why the Internet needs regulation, Then how would our government go about doing so? There are several issues that are controversial with the internet. There is pornography, racism, and hate material floating around out there that is accessiable to children all too easily. For the purposes of this paper, I will only discuss the pornography issue, since talking about all of the censorship issues would take more than a short research paper to discuss.
In early 1995, a research team at the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania released one of the most revealing studies into online pornography. The value of study titled "marketing Pornography on the information superhighway" is realized mainly due to its massive sample size. There are several issues about pornography on the internet that were highlighted by the study. The research team surveyed 917,410 "sexually explicit pictures, descriptions, short stories and film clips". Of special intrest were usenet newsgroups, which are basically electronic forums. It was found that 83.5 percent of the digitized images stored on these newsgroups were pornographic pictures. This finding indicates that there clearly is a substantial amout of pornography on the net. However, this doesn't answer the question, how easy is it to find? In the same study, The student used a search engine called "Altavista", typed in the keyword "sex", and 616,156 matches were returned. Of the first 20 only 2 links were pornographic sites. Next, on the same search engine, the keyword "tits" was typed in and 69,920 links were returned. Of the first 20 of these links 17 were to pornographic sites. After looking into one of the sites listed, it was clear that is was used for exchanging child porn. This shows that it is likely that a minor would come across these sites because of their juvinile desire to look up dirty words.

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- Introduction Pornography engages people on many levels. Some people enjoy pornography while others believe that the world would be best without it. Some would think that a song like It's Nice to be Nude is a cute song that is celebrating the joys of the human body. Others may think that it is obscene and not worth listening to. Pornography is highly subjective in respect to what it is, how it is defined, and its merits. The intent of this paper is to discuss pornography in a historical context and how it affects librarians in regards to its presence on the Internet.... [tags: Internet Pornography Essays]

- The Internet is a worldwide network of computers and databases that has evolved rapidly in recent years. Tremendous amounts of information are transmitted and are fairly easy to obtain. Although in the past the information available was for the most part educational and business oriented, in recent years it has become much more diverse and questions have been raised as to the appropriateness of the content being viewed and consumed. Another issue is whether or not the government should take an active role in censoring it, especially when it comes to pornography, or cyberporn, as it is more commonly referred to when it is displayed on the Internet.... [tags: Internet Pornography Essays]

- Imagine yourself to be a typical parent in this century. With very little time on your hands, your schedule is jammed tight: meals to fix, kids to get ready to school, getting yourself ready, a job to go to, pick up the kids, bills to pay, food to buy, etc. On one particular day, one of your children notifies you that once again they are going to the library to finish a school paper. No harm in that right. However, perhaps you would think differently if you knew your child wasn’t going to the library to merely finish his report, but to also look at pornography he had been introduced to on the internet.... [tags: Library Censorship, Censoring]

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- Since their founding, computers and the Internet have become a tool that nearly every man, woman, and child in the World have been able to use. E-mail has become one of the Worlds fastest growing ways of communication and the Internet has become one, if not the largest source of information available today. You can find just about everything you wanted to know about anything with the stroke of a few keys on the keyboard. However, along with these positive aspects of the Internet, there lies much negativity surrounding the internet and its use.... [tags: Pornography Censorship]

- Very few of us are strangers to pornography. Definitions and opinions aside, in each of our lives there was a moment when we first encountered that particular book or image or movie which forever skewed our conventional view of sex. After our introduction to pornography, sex just didn't seem as clean, serious or sacred. It became clumsy, juvenile, or simply laughable. I first became an acquaintance of pornography at the age of thirteen during a summer visit to my uncle's bachelor bungalow. In the bottom drawer of an old chest I found some moldy old copies of Hustler Magazine.... [tags: Pornography Censorship]

- Tears begin to fall down a child’s face. Her body goes into shock out of fear. Her mother warned her about watching inappropriate content, and there it was, right on her computer screen. This could not have happened though. All she was doing was casually browsing the internet before a pop-up appeared. Although it may seem hard to believe, the major cause of events such as this is the lack of censorship on the internet. Internet censorship relates to the removal of offensive, inappropriate, or controversial content published online.... [tags: Internet Pornography Essays]

- Censoring the Internet From music to television, censorship has played a major role in how the public is exposed to certain material. Now that our world is entering into a new technology era, the Internet is now in the middle of the censorship issue. Internet access is now one of the fastest ways to communicate with others, obtain information on virtually anything, and purchase items without having to leave your home. As more and more people get connected to this cyber superhighway, concern for the content of material has become a big issue.... [tags: Argumentative Persuasive Topics]

- The Internet is an extremely educational and communicative tool. Everyone can access a tremendous amount of information and connect with people on the other end of the planet; it is capable of doing everything. Nowadays, the society is facing a variety of challenges and controversies which are mostly related to religion, morality, the economic crisis, etc., and the most talked-about issue in today’s world is “Internet censorship”. Although the Internet is very useful, many people are suggesting the idea of censoring the Internet; however, the government should not censor the Internet because a free and open Internet usage has many positive impacts on people’s lives.... [tags: Internet]

- The Concerns of Internet Censorship As a professional Internet publisher and avid user of the Internet, I have become concerned with laws like the Communications Decency Act of 1996 (CDA) that censor free speech on the Internet. By approving the CDA, Congress has established a precedent which condones censorship regulations for the Internet similar to those that exist for traditional broadcast media. Treating the Internet like broadcast media is a grave mistake because the Internet is unlike any information medium that has been created.... [tags: Censoring Internet Rights Essays]

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Just like an elementary school kid would look up "cuss" words in the dictionary. Porn is no longer just "Playboy" like photos. We have enterd an age where there is a high demand for "pedophilia" (nude photos of children), "hebephilia" (youths) and what's called "paraphilia" (a grab bag of deviant material that includes images of bondage sadomasochism, urination, defication and sex act with barn yard animals). People who are against censorship of the internet often argue that it would make no difference because obscene material is avalible outside of the internet , even to children. On the internet, childer can be exposed to material even the most adventuresome kid would never get into with out it. That argument is not valid anymore.